


too heavy on my eyes (to wake up)

by Flips_and_Quips



Series: beyond the unknown [1]
Category: Night at the Museum (Movies), The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: Gen, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 09:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25468264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flips_and_Quips/pseuds/Flips_and_Quips
Summary: For the first time in several millennia, Nefertiri drew breath.
Relationships: Nefertiri & Ahkmenrah, Nefertiri (The Mummy) & Ahkmenrah (Night at the Museum)
Series: beyond the unknown [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990657
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	too heavy on my eyes (to wake up)

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N: Let me preface everything by stating that this is just more self-indulgent nonsense. Also, I'm not really a historian nor am I an Egyptologist, so I might have gotten a thing or two (or more) wrong but I tried my best to make sure that it made some sense, so please be gentle.**
> 
> **Disclaimer: I don't own the Mummy or the NatM franchises, sadly. They belong to Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox/Disney respectively.**

* * *

For the first time in several millennia, Nefertiri drew breath. 

Gasping, she arched her back as her eyes snapped open. Her heart thundered in her chest, a steady, staccato beat that echoed in her ears. 

Awake, by all the gods above and below the earth, she was _awake_. 

Nefertiri’s body sagged back against the firm, unforgiving surface she was lying down on, her frame still rattling with each tremulous gasp of breath. She slowly craned her head left and right, trying to orient herself. 

Darkness. That was all she could see. Infinite darkness. She could barely even see past her nose.

 _Where—_?

Light-headed and sluggish, Nefertiri raised her hands in front of her, only to stop short when they met resistance. Then she noticed that her fingers were encased by some sort of fabric. 

As a matter of fact, now that she was slightly more cognisant of her surroundings, she was surprised to realise that her entire body was wrapped in the same, itchy fabric.

But perhaps more alarmingly, she realised she was trapped in some sort of tight, enclosed space. For a moment, her feeble struggling ceased as she slowly pieced things together. 

No, surely not—

She put her whole weight against the slab of stone on top of her, for surely that was what it was. It certainly felt as unmoving and solid as one. 

“Let, let me out,” Nefertiri stammered, her voice cracking as her throat seized in panic. “Please! Is anyone there? Help me, please!”

Her pride warred with her unfettered fear. A princess of Kemet did not stoop so low as to _beg_ but the longer she spent inside the sarcophagus, the more she felt as if the walls were closing in on her. 

Nefertiri grunted with strained effort as she shoved and pounded her fists in a futile attempt at moving the lid of the sarcophagus but it didn’t even so much as budge. 

She gnashed her teeth and howled, propriety be damned. The noise of her panic and frustration drowned out everything else in her ears, which was why she missed the clamour of footsteps and the unintelligible murmur of voices outside of her stone prison. 

Only when her cry petered out into a hoarse warble did she finally hear the sound of the stone lid grating against the lip of the sarcophagus as it was pushed to the side. She could also make out a handful of muffled voices speaking in a strange and foreign tongue, but it all meant very little to her. The only thing that mattered was getting out of the sarcophagus. If the people outside meant Nefertiri any harm, she would fight her way to freedom, tooth and nail. She would show them what a scion of the kings of the _Iteru_ was truly capable of.

Finally, after what felt like another millennia, a shaft of light spilled through the crack between the lid and the edge of the sarcophagus, damn near blinding her with its intensity. 

Nefertiri turned her head away, squinting her eyes against the painfully bright light as her vision struggled to adjust to the sudden change. 

“Rest easy, my lady, you are safe now,” a voice called out to her, this time in the familiar cadence of her native Egyptian. 

Nefertiri licked her dry lips, nearly sobbing in relief. It was only the last shred of dignity she had left that stopped her from debasing herself, in front of a stranger no less. 

“I would rest easier if you got me out of here,” she gritted out, trying to muster up an imperious tone of someone befitting her station but the effect was lost when it came out no louder than a whisper. Her throat still felt too raw from her screaming.

The mysterious voice did not say anything else in response, but renewed their efforts all the same. 

Finally, with a great shove, the stone lid fell to the side with a thunderous bang. 

Unprompted, Nefertiri sat up, taking another shuddering intake of breath — this time in relief. 

Gods be good, she was finally _free_. She grasped at the edge of the sarcophagus, staring ahead into the middle-distance as she struggled to put some order to her fragmented thoughts. 

There was a considerable chunk of Nefertiri’s memories that was missing, which both worried and terrified her. The last thing she could recall clearly at the moment was the feeling of betrayal and heartbreak. Everything else was coming back to her in small bits and pieces, disjointed and disarrayed. 

Distantly, she could feel the warmth of a palm pressed between her shoulder blades. The calm instructions for her to take deeper and slower breaths were what made her realise that she had been hyperventilating in the first place. Grudgingly, she complied. 

“There we are, easy does it,” the same mysterious voice from before soothed, startling Nefertiri from her thoughts.

She turned to its source, her face blanching at what she found. 

A man, no older than she was, stood clothed in full regalia, his gilt _pschent_ sitting heavy above his brow. But this man was not her brother, Ramesses, and he certainly wasn't her father—

Her father. 

Ra’s mercy, her father. 

That simple thought tore the floodgates asunder. Nefertiri shook her head in horror as an onslaught of memories rushed forth. It was as if she could still hear the sound of her father’s pained cries as that treacherous _snake_ Anck Su Namun murdered him. And Imhotep, his own high priest and trusted vizier, had stood by and _helped_. 

She scrambled back from the usurper, for that was surely what he was. Ramesses was the crown prince, and if the Falcon had flown to heaven, then it stood to reason that her brother would be next in line for the throne. The last she could recall of him, her brother had been hale and healthy, leading campaigns to strengthen their boarders in the south.

What's more, the man before her was no relative of hers, she would have recognised him otherwise. 

“It’s all right,” the man hurriedly assured her, his hands held out before him in a placating gesture when he noticed her distrustful expression. "We won't hurt you."

At the word _'we'_ , Nefertiri's eyes flickered to the odd assortment of people gathered around them for the first time. They were a respectable distance away but she still tensed in preparation for some sort of attack. She did not trust them, especially if they were in league with this _usurper_. 

Nonetheless, Nefertiri would show them no fear. She lowered her hands back into the shadow of the sarcophagus, lest they see the slight tremble of her fingers. "Why am I here?" 

The man's expression softened with sympathy, an action that both baffled and irritated her. She did not need his pity, whatever the reason for it may be. 

Slowly, he lowered his hands back down to his sides, looking as though he was deliberating with himself. 

One of his companions, a man dressed in some strange, blue garment, asked him something in that foreign tongue Nefertiri had overheard from inside the sarcophagus. She strained her ears to try and see if there was a chance she might understand even a bit of what it was he was saying, but it was pointless. It all sounded like gibberish to her in the end. 

But much to her surprise, the man had responded back in kind, and he seemed to speak the language with such ease and fluency. 

They continued to have a rushed conversation in the foreign language, and Nefertiri stared at them both in tense anticipation. She had no idea what they could possibly be saying but it was obvious it was about her, this she knew for certain when the strangely dressed man gestured to her at some point in the conversation. 

When the usurper finally turned back to her, his prior conversation finally having reached some sort of conclusion, Nefertiri braced herself. 

He rubbed at the back of his neck, a gesture that was so boyish in its sheepishness that it seemed at odds with how he should normally carry himself in his stately clothes. “There really is no gentle way of saying this,” he murmured, mostly to himself. Then he raised his head to look at her, gently prodding, “What is the last thing that you remember?”

Was this some sort of trick? A tactic to confuse her? But the man’s expression remained unchanged, disarming in its openness. 

Nefertiri turned her head away, unable to look at him any longer. She wracked desperately at the vague emptiness in her memories, desperate for any hint at her current situation. Her father...her father’s death she could remember clearly. It was so horrifying, and she bore witness to it as she stood on her balcony, helpless to stop it. But then what?

Nothing distinct came forth, no matter how hard Nefertiri tried to sift through what she _could_ remember. There was a sense of foreboding though, something that made her heart feel like it was trapped in a vice. The truth, no matter how unpleasant, lay just in the periphery of her mind. A part of her knew it, all the clues led to it, but she couldn’t stomach it — the blanks in her memories, the linen wraps, the damned _sarcophagus_.   
  


When Nefertiri briefly glanced up at the usurper, his hang-dog expression did little to soothe the tight ball of anxiety she could feel in the pit of her stomach. 

“No,” Nefertiri mumbled in denial, her hands covering her eyes in a futile attempt to stop the onslaught of emotions. For a moment, her composure crumbled and her breath hitched. “It can’t be! I—”

Distantly, Nefertiri heard the sound of slippered feet edge closer to the sarcophagus then stop, as if he were unsure how to proceed. “It might not mean much, but I _am_ sorry. I wish there was a better way for you to have found out,” the man said, his voice gentle. 

If Nefertiri had indeed passed on, then this man was not the usurper she had silently accused him of being. She felt a sliver of shame for her accusation, unvoiced though it may have been. 

"What happened?" Nefertiri asked thickly, staring down at her wrapped hands, finally noticing the small hieratic script written on the linen wrapped around them with a sense of sorrow. She assumed they were spells to help her journey through the Duat. 

"I am... _was_ dead. What have you done to me?" Saying it aloud did not help fill the hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach but it did make it a little more real. 

"Nothing," the man insisted but after a moment's pause, he relented. "Nothing on purpose, I suppose. You give me too much credit. This, all of this, is really my Tablet's doing."

Nefertiri perked her head at that, staring at him in bemused askance. "Your...Tablet?" She parroted, sounding doubtful.

"Just after my birth, my father had commissioned the finest goldsmiths to make the Tablet, which was then blessed by Khonsu himself so that we might be together for all of eternity. After every sunset, under Khonsu's watchful eye, all those within the presence of the Tablet are brought back to life. And that brings us here," the man explained patiently, in the manner of one who had probably done this song and dance ad nauseum. “In New York, in the American Museum of Natural History.”

Nefertiri had listened to him intently, her face an unwavering mask. The latter part of what he said might as well have been nonsense for all that she understood of it but when she heard him explain the origin of his Tablet, a part of her started in recognition of the tale. 

Could it be? 

Nefertiri had heard of the legends herself, of a second son who was so beloved by his parents that they had given him the crown of Kemet in their eldest son’s stead. That they could not bear the thought of being separated so they had fashioned a Tablet that was enchanted to defy Death itself, granting them the chance to be together for as long as those very same enchantments held true. 

The line of the kings were certainly descended from the great Ra himself but then, none could quite lay claim to immortality either. Gods-blessed, that’s what this man was.

 _Or cursed_ , a more blasphemous part of Nefertiri whispered. _Who wanted to live forever if it meant straddling the line between life and death_?

"You mean to say," Nefertiri started haltingly, still trying to digest the implications of his words. "That _you_ are Ahkmenrah." 

The man's expression cleared and he smiled, a wistful little thing. "Ah, so you've heard of me then. You had not recognised me immediately before, so I must assume that you're from a time after my passing."

"Give or take a few centuries," Nefertiri responded feebly, her mind still reeling. _This_ was the fabled king Ahkmenrah, he who was favoured by Khonsu? He was comely, at the very least, if a little younger than she had imagined him to be. 

"Indeed?" the man, _Ahkmenrah_ , queried. He looked thoughtful, his head cocked to the side.

Impatiently, Nefertiri spoke once again before Ahkmenrah had the chance to. “If this is not the Duat, then where am I? What is this _New York_ and who are those...people?”

Ahkmenrah started, as if just remembering that they had an audience who were likely just as lost as Nefertiri was, though for entirely different reasons.

"You have nothing to fear, they mean you no harm," Ahkmenrah was quick to assure her. 

Nefertiri frowned, still on edge. "That doesn't exactly answer my question."

“These are my friends,” Ahkmenrah explained, gesturing to the people situated near the entrance of the room. “We had heard that a new exhib—that someone new was being sent here so we came to help them. As you can imagine, it can be a bit of a jarring experience to wake up in an entirely new place.” 

At that, Nefertiri spared a moment to glance at her surroundings, furrowing her brow as she took it all in. It seemed as if her sarcophagus was perched on a strange-looking flat surface, several feet from the floor. And what further mystified her was that the room seemed to be well-lit despite the fact that she had yet to see a brazier or any torches nearby. 

“This is so bizarre,” Nefertiri admitted under her breath, feeling so lost and oddly bereft — a pang of homesickness unfurling in her chest. This was not her father’s palace, and the whole host of odd-looking people hovering in the wings only served to further emphasise this point. 

Ahkmenrah looked commiserating, and said softly, “It _is_ a little too much to take in at first but it does get easier as time goes on.” 

Nefertiri took in his comforting words with a stiff nod, focusing all her efforts on not bursting into tears of frustration. 

“Where are my manners,” Ahkmenrah suddenly cut in, possibly noting the sullen and melancholic silence Nefertiri had fallen into. In an effort to distract her, he continued on with a light remark of, “You know who I am but I never had the chance to ask for your name.”

"I am Nefertiri," she said, grateful for the distraction, as she straightened up from her slouch. She might not be dressed in her usual fineries or her jewellery, but she was still a King's Daughter and so she sought to make the best impression. "Daughter of King Seti, the Strong Bull and Lord of the Two Lands. Singer of Hathor, and Singer of Amun-great-in-his-glory."

For now, she forcefully buried her sorrows in the deep recesses of her mind. Only when she was truly alone would she allow herself to properly mourn, away from prying eyes. Habits were hard to break, after all. 

Ahkmenrah gaped at her, seemingly caught off-guard by something she had said. Before Nefertiri could question him for his odd behaviour, he quickly caught himself and bowed his head, a surprisingly graceful movement despite the considerable heft of his _pschent_. "The name suits you, your Highness," he said with such honest sincerity that her lips parted in a moue of surprise.

Nefertiri should be past falling for such puerile forms of flattery but she found herself oddly flustered by his comment nonetheless. 

Thankfully, Ahkmenrah paid no mind to her momentary lapse of composure. Instead, he offered her his hand to help her climb down from the sarcophagus, for which she was grateful for. There was something utterly morbid about staying in her sarcophagus any longer than absolutely necessary. 

Once she stood, Nefertiri’s knees nearly buckled beneath her weight, unused to being on her feet again as she was — gods knew how long she had been in her sarcophagus for. It was only Ahkmenrah’s arm around her that stopped Nefertiri from falling to the floor in an unseemly heap. 

Were it any other occasion, she would have balked at his daring familiarity but at the moment, she was merely grateful that she didn’t further embarrass herself. Once Ahkmenrah was sure she was stable on her feet, he took a respectful step back.

"If you'd allow it, I would like to introduce you to my friends. You must have a lot of questions, and I promise to answer them as much as I can but it will be much easier to show you around than to simply explain it. Trust me, there are some things that need to be seen to be believed," Ahkmenrah explained with an easy smile.

"I would...appreciate that," Nefertiti said, half incredulous, and half wary. She said nothing else though, simply trailing after him in reflective silence. 

Like it or not, Ahkmenrah was the only link Nefertiri had to her past, the one familiar thing she had in this strange and alien place. She would stay close to him for now.

Up ahead were the people Ahkmenrah had proudly called his friends, and as they drew closer Nefertiri could hear them titter in that foreign language once again. 

Instead of being cowed by the prospect of meeting such strange people, in an equally strange place, Nefertiri drew forth the last dregs of her courage and fixed her expression into a blank mask.

It was time to see what was in store for her. 

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N: A little context because I'm not sure I'll be continuing this (even if I wanted to). Nefertiri's mummy was a more recent find, and due to some convenient plot device, she's been brought to the AMoNH for some scientific research and identification — maybe some non-invasive x-rays or some such? Since grave robbing was such a big problem, it wasn't uncommon for some royal mummies to be taken from their original tombs and be hidden somewhere else for protection since a lot of looters desecrated their tombs, which is what happened to Nefertiri. Hence why up to the point that she's reanimated, she was an anonymous mummy because she was probably transferred to a different tomb way back in antiquity, whether by priests or by the robbers themselves.**
> 
> **Also some other details, since Ahkmenrah wasn't really attached to any particular dynasty in the films, I'm going to go ahead and assume that he's from somewhere in the Middle Kingdom. There have been several posts online that explain and justify it better than I could. And since it's established in the Mummy Returns film that Nefertiri was Seti's daughter, that would make her from the 19th Dynasty. If I were being technical, Ahk and Nefertiri wouldn't really be able to communicate because he would speak in Middle Egyptian and she would speak in Late Egyptian but ah, well. More handwavey fanfic magic.**
> 
> -
> 
> A glossary of some of the terms I used:
> 
> _Kemet_ \- what the ancient Egyptians called Egypt at the time.
> 
> _Iteru_ \- what the ancient Egyptians called the Nile which really just means river.
> 
> _Pschent_ \- the crown worn by the pharaohs of a unified Egypt. Technically Ahk wore a deshret, which was the crown of pharaohs of Lower Egypt but I assume he ruled the Two Lands so I tweaked that a bit.
> 
>  _The Falcon has flown to heaven_ \- this was a term used to announce that the reigning pharaoh had died.
> 
>  _Duat_ \- what the ancient Egyptians referred to as the underworld.
> 
>  _Singer_ \- noble ladies normally had titles, whether it was Musician or Singer for example, that indicated that they took part in religious rituals. Singer would mean that she was part of the choir of that particular deity. The titles I used for Nefertiri were actually some of princess Tia's, another one of Seti's daughters. I guess that would mean they were sisters.


End file.
